What Is Rate Limiting?

Rate limiting is a technique used to control the amount of incoming or outgoing traffic to or from a network, application, or server over a specified period. This mechanism helps ensure fair resource usage, protects against abuse, and enhances the stability and security of systems.

Why Is Rate Limiting Important?

Without rate limiting, applications are vulnerable to:

• Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks: Attackers can overwhelm servers with excessive requests.
• Brute Force Attacks: Unauthorized login attempts can be repeated infinitely without restrictions.
• API Abuse: Uncontrolled access can lead to resource exhaustion and degraded service for legitimate users.
• Scraping and Spam: Automated tools can extract sensitive data or flood systems with junk data.

Rate limiting mitigates these threats by enforcing request thresholds per user, IP address, or endpoint.

How SafeLine WAF Handles Rate Limiting

SafeLine WAF includes built-in support for rate limiting to protect your web applications from excessive or malicious requests.

SafeLine WAF provides flexible and powerful rate limiting features:

• Global or Per-App Settings: Configure rate limiting rules globally or specifically for individual applications.
• Multiple Limiting Options:
  • Access Limiting: Restrict general request frequency.
  • Attack Limiting: Mitigate suspicious request patterns.
  • Error Limiting: Limit repeated error responses such as 403, 404, 500.
• Custom Actions:
  • Block: Immediately block excessive traffic.
  • Anti-Bot Challenge: Present challenges like CAPTCHA to suspicious clients.
• Real-time Monitoring: Visual insights into triggered rules and affected clients.

How to Configure Rate Limiting in SafeLine WAF

1. Log in to the SafeLine Dashboard.
2. If you want to set up globally, navigate to HTTP Flood > Rate Limiting.
3. Enable Access Limiting, Attack Limiting, Error Limiting and configure as you want.
4. If you want to set up rules per app, navigate to Applications > HTTP Flood, and set up in the same way.
5. Save the rule.

Example Use Case

If your site is being targeted for SQL injection attacks, you can configure a rule like:

• Enable Attack Limiting
• Limit: 5 attacks per minute / 60 sec
• Action: Block 30 min

This effectively stops repeated SQL injections.

Conclusion

Rate limiting is a crucial part of modern web security. With SafeLine WAF, you get robust, flexible tools to implement rate control and help ensure stability and security against high-volume or malicious traffic.

SafeLine Website: https://ly.safepoint.cloud/ShZAy9x
Discord: https://discord.gg/dy3JT7dkmY
Github: https://github.com/chaitin/SafeLine